GAINESVILLE, Fla. - The ninth-ranked Florida Gators defeated the Georgia volleyball team in three sets Friday evening in a Southeastern Conference Eastern Division match at the Stephen C. O'Connell center.

Florida earned the victory with set scores of 25-16, 25-20 and 25-14 to improve to 19-3 overall and 13-2 in SEC play while Georgia drops to 14-11 overall and 5-9 in league action.

"Our focus was about using our confident way of training from the past couple of weeks and the results we were getting to help us step up and compete closer to our potential tonight," Georgia head coach Joel McCartney said. "Although I felt we played under that level for the first set, we stepped up bigger in the second and were close up to about the 20^th point. We made some critical errors at the end of that set and didn't recover from the chances we made for ourselves."

The Gators finished the match with a .474 hitting percentage led by Kelly Murphy and Kristy Jaeckel. Murphy posted a match-best 12 kills on a .579 clip and finished with a double-double by tallying 17 assists. Jaeckel added 11 kills on a .526 mark. Defensively, Jaeckel and libero Elyse Cusack tied for the match lead with eight digs, and Florida out blocked Georgia 9.0 to 2.0.

"That was the best I have seen the Gators play against us, and we have to credit their preparedness for a strong performance," McCartney noted. "It was clear they didn't under estimate us, but we didn't step up to the match challenge tonight and that is disappointing for sure."

The Bulldogs top performances in the contest included 10 kills from junior Simone May, six kills from redshirt freshman opposite hitter Briana Bahr and five kills on a .286 clip from junior middle hitter Valentina Gonzalez.

"Simone and Briana were bright spots for us early on," McCartney said. "But without too much support from the rest, we didn't have enough to be in this one tonight."

Also of note for Georgia, sophomore setter Kathleen Gates tallied a match-best 21 assists, which moved her career assist total to 2,012. Gates becomes only the seventh player in school history to record 2,000 or more assists.

Up next, Georgia travels to Columbia, S.C., for another SEC Eastern Division showdown against South Carolina (13-11, 5-10 SEC). First serve between the Bulldogs and Gamecocks is slated for 1:30 p.m. ET, and live stats will be available via www.gamecocksonline.com.

"We will need to re-group in our preparation for South Carolina Sunday if we are going to salvage something from the weekend," McCartney said.